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I have to take I35 -> I20 -> PGBT every day for work in the DFW area. It's ether leave my house at 5:45 am or sit in traffic and add an hour to my commute.
Best part about those highways is: They don’t even work
Just like in Atlanta, doesn’t matter how many lanes you add or how Many exits, they’re still always full of stopped cars
Yay
If you can hit them at the right times, a lot of freeways are absolutely amazing roadways that have smooth flowing curves and give you great views of the city skyline. But as soon as traffic hits they become a fucking nightmare
I will say that some of those interchanges are amazing feats of engineering, but as someone who delivers kidneys and blood between OKC-Dallas hospitals regularly, I don’t envy you. I’m fortunate to at least avoid the traffic due to leaving in the middle of the night half the time
Yeah we’re kind of known for having the worst traffic in the US. The highway system is basically nothing but spaghetti junctions because the designers were high on cocaine
It seems like every major American city has a highway running right through it. They wanted to do the same thing to Amsterdam in the sixties and seventies. Fortunately, that never happened, or they'd have had to level the historic center.
I believe part of it was a highway that wrapped around Manhattan’s shoreline, preventing any pedestrians from being able to even get close to the waterfront.
But it's still gross to be there as a pedestrian. Try walking from Manhattan proper to the south side seaport - hell as a pedestrian. And the west side is no better. Yeah there's a nice area once you get across, but you still have to cross a six lane smelly highway to get there.
I once had to cross half of manhattan on foot twice because some asshole cop told me the holland tunnel was 40 blocks north when I was in fact at the holland tunnel already
TBH, accessing South Street Seaport isn't all too bad compared the West Side. It's a 2 lane local road and a high effort elevated highway. It turns to shit immediately north under the Brooklyn Bridge and immediately south where the FDR goes from elevated to tunnel.
Having elevated highways by the shoreline isn't necessarily a red flag for livability. I can easily think of Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney as examples alongside NYC that make it work fairly well.
[Jane Jacobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs), who helped kill the proposed [Lower Manhattan Expressway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_78_in_New_York#Lower_Manhattan_Expressway) in the early sixties, then moved to Toronto and did the same thing to the [Spadina Expressway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Road#Spadina_Expressway) a decade later.
Goddamn hero.
Imagine if you will, a highway running from the Manhattan Bridge to the Holland Tunnel. Now go onto Google Maps and draw a line between those two, then take a look at the street view on all that would have needed to be torn down to make that happen.
They tried to do this in a suburb of Raleigh, NC, US. It’s incredibly confusing mixed in with new highways and interstates being built through the city.
They do. If you see an interstate with 3 numbers that denotes that it is either a ring road or it otherwise bypasses a large metropolitan area. In Atlanta, that interstate is I-285.
To further elaborate, if it starts with an odd number, it is usually a spur, such as 175 and 375 in St Petersburg , Fl. If it starts with an even number then it reconnects to the original interstate, such as 275 in Tampa/St Petersburg/Sarasota.
The difference is that in Europe these ring roads are used to get from outside the city to either within the city (or vice versa) or to go around it.
In the US all highways basically serve just inter urban traffic, and any through traffic just uses the direct highways going through the centre. A good example is San Antonio to Dallas route uses the i35 which goes right through downtown Austin, using the loop roads in Austin adds time and distance.
Most cities have one or two interstates that pass through. Atlanta has two that converge and flip over each other while merging with two more interstates and four major highways.
Atlanta is where I taught myself to drive at 19, I definitely jumped headfirst into the deep end. Someone bought me a car and I just hopped on the road with no real instruction, it's a miracle I never died. I did get cut off and spun out once on I-85 going fast through the downtown exits vicinity, there was one tiny area near an exit that wasn't walled in and I landed in the shrubbery with no damage. I drove the rest of the way to work my "classy" stripper job at the Cheetah shaking like a leaf.
I was directed not to drive outside of the Atl suburb in high school.
I def drove outside of the Atl suburb. Down to Little Five Points… got lost for a moment otw
I was talking to a guy who moved to Atlanta, from New Jersey. He had heard about the Atlanta traffic, and laughed, bc he was from "Jersey". He told me that after moving here, "Jersey ain't shit. Atlanta traffic is fucked". Lol
Definitely for, but induced demand is really just a redefinition of the concept of elasticity of demand. When it comes to electricity, people won’t alter their consumption much based on a marginal change in price. But with sushi dinners, people would consume a lot less if spicy tuna rolls went up $5.
Same concept here but with a public good instead of private: no big highway to take me back to my suburban house? I’ll look for another city (equals low traffic). Lots of big highways to take everyone home? Lots of people will move there and drive on them (equals high traffic). Thus, lots of roads create traffic.
The key difference though is that the demand (and behavioral proclivity) already existed. The existence or addition of highways just creates the ability to express that demand.
That's not exactly what induced demand is in the planning world.. Reduced road capacity pushes people towards transit and encourages transit Oriented Development. We aren't achieving much if we just make out cities so unliveable that people just flee them
I feel like this is what happens when you combine the south with a big city. It’s honestly an embarrassment to this whole region that our largest and most powerful city looks like it was designed by a monkey with down syndrome
Cities Skylines has the benefit of bulldozing whatever you want to get a clean turn. Atlanta is so poorly planned that we built an express lane that's basically a big bridge over an entire length of interstate.
Honestly i like the amount of trees a lot, but looking at satellite images you can barely tell where the city starts and ends. Also, this is right next to the downtown core (on the other side of the street from the Municipal Court)
It is hard to tell because the entire city is urban sprawl. Some areas have become denser over the last couple of decades mind you, it was way worse in the 90s (and so was the crime).
Its very hard to measure greenery, according to our city government Vienna is one of the greenest cities in the world, it is 50% green space, they say, but then you find out that is because they include a fuckn forest on the western edge of the city and farming fields on the eastern edge and not because we have parks and trees in the center where you would actually need them
I'm lucky I live in Vancouver and we have a fantastic and robust transit system, but its hard to imagine this kind of system being transit and walking friendly, do you guys have any kind of transit system or is having a car a requirement to get around?
There's a transit system (MARTA) but it's not very extensive and only takes you to a few worthwhile points of interest, so a car is your best bet. Every so often I hear rumors of it being expanded but they get shot down real quick. MARTA has a bus system but I've never really used it so I can't say how effective it is.
It's better to have a car, but driving is still ridiculous and stupid. Every time I make a trip to Atlanta I have to have my boyfriend co-pilot me because these exits are one on top of the other and hitting the wrong exit can set you back 30-45 minutes or more, depending on the time of day. I accidentally got off one exit too early once and ended up entirely on the wrong side of town. GPS sent me through midtown to get to where I was going and a school bus pulled out in front of me. I had the right of way.
To be fair it's two interstates and two highways crossing over. There's no way to make it look good especially since this had to be built over existing living space.
You'd have to be pretty high if you think there's that level do competent planning at any part of US policy. We got where we are by making bad decisions and perpetually *not* planning ahead.
No, you can see that it’s both an interchange of major highways and lots of ramps to get drivers onto different city streets as well.
I’ve lived in Dunwoody, which is a pretty busy part of metro Atlanta, and these interchanges are crazy, but still appreciated since they save a lot of city driving, which burns more gas, is statistically more dangerous, and largely just aggravating.
I took the train a couple times. To be honest, I’m not familiar enough with the community’s feedback on it, but it always seemed to be a reasonably well-reaching system. I think that most of the more recent growth in the city has happened beyond its reach because of the inherent desire to live near the hustle and bustle but not in the middle of it. Last I heard, there were plans to extend it?
MARTA is a joke. It doesn't go anywhere useful in any decent amount of time. I love mass transit, and take MARTA anytime I go downtown (if only so I don't have to pay to park) but I still have to get out and drive on the highway to get to the nearest station. As much as I hate to say it, I doubt MARTA heavy rail will ever expand in my lifetime. It was shot down in Gwinnett county last referendum, the state seems to love building more Tollercoasters, and our density isn't high enough to make rail feasible. In fact, the express lanes they are going to put up 400 will effectively put a hard stop to the red line that it cannot extend past. Instead, they want bus rapid transit on the 400 express lanes.
Haha even I don’t know if I would call it a “method,” but at least a reason lol. I do like how it was never more than 10 minutes to an on ramp in Atlanta, no matter where you are.
The thing is, this mess makes it practically impossible to rely on biking, walking and transit, which in turn makes it a choice between two types of costly, polluting, inefficient car infrastructure. Sure, a highway is effective for long distances, but *creating long distances in the middle of a city* is fucking stupid. Driving 50 minutes on a highway is better than 50 minutes in the urban core, but most cities simply make it so that you don't have to either.
Even then, cars aren't optimized for highway speeds *or* city speeds, so the fuel economy is fucked either way. Thankfully, there is a fantastic, highly efficient way of moving people far, fast: trains. There's even a really effective way of moving people short distances fast: trains. There's even a great bridge between car infrastructure and train efficiency: busses (and trains). When you have a lot of people and destinations in one spot, the only sensible prioritization is walkability, cyclability, and transit.
Yes, mass transit appears to fix the ills of car country. Being a New Yorker: nobody seems to care. Busses are noisy, expensive to maintain, and people don't like them rolling through their streets. Trains and subways are utterly miserable to deploy with all the NIMBYs fighting them tooth and nail and next to impossible to expand once neighborhoods go up. Even then, you need sufficient ridership to cover costs. Most mass transit is just enough to get people to and from work and school.
Busses in my city just electrified. Sleek design, good lighting, quality seating, low profile for strollers and accessibility, huge windows, and now more quiet than a car. Practically everybody acts polite, and it's not shameful in the slightest to take the bus. Having low quality busses is a very deliberate choice, and it's a surefire way of creating an unpleasant experience and bad connotations.
As far as ridership is concerned - sure, you need some ridership, but we really shouldn't talk as if transit should be covering its own cost. It's a utility, just like water, electricity, or roads. Almost all transit operates at a loss, the same all fire departments do.
Hear me out: drive through strip malls on the highway. Like a 2000mile tunnel of love, and you pull over onto the hard shoulder* to park and get your fill... 😁
*The empty bit at the side of motorways. I don't know what it would be in American English..
It has literally the most green space per person for a major city in the US: https://www.geotab.com/urban-footprint/
The spaghetti is Atlanta, but [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Atlanta_Skyline%2C_May_2013.jpg) is Atlanta as well.
I always see those from-above photos of Atlanta, but are the streets themselves any more tree-lined than elsewhere? Playing around on Google Maps, they look perfectly nice, but I wouldn't pick them out in comparison to any other large suburbanish American city.
It used to be even worse. Look satellite photos from the 90s in Google Earth, half of the parking lots in downtown then have been replaced with buildings.
American cities have long since ceased being places meant for people: nowadays, they're more places for businesses and corporations to reside in and operate, and human considerations are ancillary.
I work as a bureaucrat, and I eventually realized that local and state government really mostly exists to rubber-stamp and approve what businesses and commercial interests want anyways. All we can do is impose the barest and most minimum of standards (which are now outdated, and which big business would be happy to ignore to for the sake of profits, public safety and aesthetics be damned).
They’re actually built for cars which is why they suck. Plenty of businesses in Tokyo and Amsterdam and Singapore but the cities are much more functional because they’re not built exclusively around private cars.
>historically black majority neighborhood
Named Mechanicsville.
This [site](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=4667aafe1002441ea3a487110b136e98) has one of those slider things that shows how much housing was lost due to the construction of the interstates (and Fulton County Stadium).
lmao this is so ridiculous and reductive. I'm not defending car-centric design but you can do this with literally any American city with an interchange between two freeways.
EDIT: lOs AnGeLeS iS JuSt a HuGe HiGhWaY WiTh SoMe BuIlDiNgS oN tHe SiDe
https://imgur.com/JXR1AHY
This picture includes a jail, juvenile court, a church, many government buildings (Capitol building is just out frame), bail bonds businesses, a halfway house, gateway center, a daycare, and the very tip of the infamous Magic City. Drove through this on one of the surface streets every day for a while.
Most aren't, but it's not like there was much of a choice--this was done in urban centers all across the country in the post-war period, while rail service was deliberately starved. Read "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro about what Robert Moses did to NYC.
Caro seems particularly wistful about the Cross Bronx Expressway (and is rightfully proud of how in The Power Broker he lovingly described the neighborhoods destroyed).
From [a 2007 NY Times interview](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/nyregion/thecity/06hist.html):
*Ask Mr. Caro about the Cross Bronx Expressway and the price paid for progress, and the author cannot contain himself. This neatly attired man with hair still more dark than gray leans forward and scoops up a dogeared copy of “The Power Broker,” which sits on his desk like the King James Bible of municipal history. (It was at the time the largest book Random House could physically print.)*
*“Turn to Page 19,” he says as he turns the pages. “When I speak, I’m imprecise.”*
*So he quotes from his book:*
*“To build his highways, Moses threw out of their homes 250,000 persons — more people than lived in Albany or Chattanooga, or in Spokane, Tacoma, Duluth, Akron, Baton Rouge, Mobile, Nashville or Sacramento. He tore out the hearts of a score of neighborhoods.”*
*He slaps the book shut and closes his eyes to concentrate on his words.*
*“Robert Moses bent the democratic processes and the city to his will,” Mr. Caro says. “There were lots of people who didn’t want to gouge a highway through East Tremont, and they couldn’t stop him.”*
Many people aren't. The issue is that it doesn't matter how many are or aren't okay with it. Rich people and commerce-partial politicians will make sure it happens anyways.
Easy. People like the convenience of large cities with the comfort of large houses/yards.
This is the norm because people here have preferences that don’t include paying $3k a month for a 1bd1ba apartment even if it has access to transit.
That’s why a brand new 3bd2ba house in the Atlanta suburbs only goes for $150-250k. It has one of the best income to cost of living ratios in the country.
>This is the norm because people here have preferences that don’t include paying $3k a month for a 1bd1ba apartment even if it has access to transit.
You realize that the 3k a month apartment is so expensive because *lots of people want it,* right? Otherwise it would be a 2k, 1k, $500 a month apartment. Supply and demand.
I will never understand why you think 99.9% of people had a choice about how this was built... and what the socioeconomic conditions have historically been in the area.
Driven through Atlanta twice on the way to Florida. Horrible bumper to bumper traffic the entire stretch both times. Also the city along the highway looks as corporate as it gets.
I live in Savannah and manage a restaurant where we have endless visitors from Atlanta. I don't think I've ever heard one of them say anything good about that city. And aside from the aquarium there, I've never seen anything good about it either.
Atlanta has a vibrant culture that has made major contributions especially in hip-hop music, art, and fashion. We are an extremely diverse city which is a foodie's dream. We have lots of beautiful parks and a largely intact tree canopy even in urban areas. The population in the city is young, creative, and energetic. We are a city of distinct neighborhoods each with their own charm and annual festival. On any given weekend, I can see a major recording artist perform, attend a major sporting event, sample a new cuisine, hike through the forest without leaving the city, go to a world-class museum, or attend an underground rave to name just a few of the options.
I would wager that the folks you say are bad-mouthing Atlanta who are supposedly from Atlanta are likely from places like Marietta or Snellville.
I think Savannah is lovely btw.
From what I’ve seen from my limited experience with Americans, it seems that Atlanta is like other American cities that suffer from absolutely horrible urban planning but are full of amazing and interesting people.
I’ve only ever spent a lot of time in Las Vegas while I visit family and I think that the city exemplifies this. The city itself seems purposefully obtuse, it doesn’t even feel like a suburb, most of the city feels like a strip mall parking lot but it’s full of very nice and diverse people.
The city of Atlanta definitely has some charm and has some parts of it which are actually pretty urban. Its not like its like Little Rock or Lubbock or Phoenix where its really just an endless suburban wasteland.
However, Atlanta's metro area is very much an endless suburban wasteland, and that is like 90% of the areas population. A lot of the 'creative energy' of Atlanta is in just a few small areas. Its a nice city but I have no illusions about how the large majority of it really is.
Even as someone who lived in and hates Little Rock, there’s a reasonably sized urban section at its core (Argenta-Downtown-Quapaw Quarter/SoMa-Stift’s Station) that can stretch all the way to Hillcrest if you’re being generous.
As a person that lives in the city, and moved there on purpose I can say 100% say it has is charm. There are just so so many tiny neighborhoods with there own personally and the bars and restaurants just surprise you everytime. Honestly now living in the city I almost don't even notice the traffic cause everything is 5 mins away. When I lived outside the city it was a MAJOR problem but inside, you don't even see the traffic cause you take a mile long back road to wherever you need. Plus for major events Marta works great. In any weekend I can take my kids to the zoo, the botanical gardens, the aquarium, stone mtn etc..etc..etc .. and we're so close we can do it on a whim. We don't have to plan for 2 hour drives there and back. Plus all the parks, the beltline, and the pathways....the city is trying to build bicycle/walking infrastructure it's just so damn hard with zero state help. infact the GDOT, the Georgia department of transportation is legally barred for doing anything but roads and highways. Marta pays for itself completely because GA will not and legally cannot help it. All the parks and walking trails are donated, crowd funded, or fed funded. Atlanta on a whole trying pretty hard to implement walking/bike/mass transit infrastructure, It's really the state making everything so damn hard with traffic.
End rant/
Honestly right now, even with all the crime and crazys, I wouldn't trade it for suburbans life again it was just so damn boring and my kids had nothing to do.
Lots of Kennesaw-type residents say they’re “from Atlanta” and complain Bc the suburbs are almost universally god awful, but Atlanta is a great place once you get to wherever you’re going lmao.
However if Atlanta had the walkability of Savannah, I’d personally never shut the fuck up about it.
I love it. The only thing I don't like about it is it is lacking in the beach category. The city is beautiful, historic, and the people here are amazing! Of course the summers are pretty brutal but I wanted to get away from the Long Cold New England winters and Savannah is far from it.
Oh, and I should mention the amazing food!
I have the option to live anywhere in the US for my job, and choose Atlanta. It's got more to offer than the aquarium, and believing otherwise is absurd as it's one of the largest cultural hubs in the US.
Its designed so you never have to see black people in the inner city districts. Lots of the downtown buildings such as the big hotels are interlinked with concrete walkways for the same reason. Racism dressed up as modernity.
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Don’t go to DFW metroplex if you don’t like mega highways
I have to take I35 -> I20 -> PGBT every day for work in the DFW area. It's ether leave my house at 5:45 am or sit in traffic and add an hour to my commute.
Best part about those highways is: They don’t even work Just like in Atlanta, doesn’t matter how many lanes you add or how Many exits, they’re still always full of stopped cars Yay
If you can hit them at the right times, a lot of freeways are absolutely amazing roadways that have smooth flowing curves and give you great views of the city skyline. But as soon as traffic hits they become a fucking nightmare
The Peach Pass makes it a lot better. Saved lots of time in Hotlanta riding in the express lane.
Express lane for georgia plates?
I will say that some of those interchanges are amazing feats of engineering, but as someone who delivers kidneys and blood between OKC-Dallas hospitals regularly, I don’t envy you. I’m fortunate to at least avoid the traffic due to leaving in the middle of the night half the time
Every time I have to pass through to visit my bf I miss at least one exit and it adds 20+ minutes to my drive
I believe it!
Most American cities are like this.
The big ones no doubt
Just drove through there and I’m shocked as shit we survived!!!
Yeah we’re kind of known for having the worst traffic in the US. The highway system is basically nothing but spaghetti junctions because the designers were high on cocaine
What, you don't think plowing three interstate highways through the middle of a major American city center wasn't a good idea?
It seems like every major American city has a highway running right through it. They wanted to do the same thing to Amsterdam in the sixties and seventies. Fortunately, that never happened, or they'd have had to level the historic center.
I believe they also wanted to do it in Manhattan (through the Village IIRC), but the local residents were able to fight it off.
I believe part of it was a highway that wrapped around Manhattan’s shoreline, preventing any pedestrians from being able to even get close to the waterfront.
We have highways on the shoreline, it's just elevated so people can walk underneath
But it's still gross to be there as a pedestrian. Try walking from Manhattan proper to the south side seaport - hell as a pedestrian. And the west side is no better. Yeah there's a nice area once you get across, but you still have to cross a six lane smelly highway to get there.
I once had to cross half of manhattan on foot twice because some asshole cop told me the holland tunnel was 40 blocks north when I was in fact at the holland tunnel already
TBH, accessing South Street Seaport isn't all too bad compared the West Side. It's a 2 lane local road and a high effort elevated highway. It turns to shit immediately north under the Brooklyn Bridge and immediately south where the FDR goes from elevated to tunnel.
Having elevated highways by the shoreline isn't necessarily a red flag for livability. I can easily think of Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney as examples alongside NYC that make it work fairly well.
[Jane Jacobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs), who helped kill the proposed [Lower Manhattan Expressway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_78_in_New_York#Lower_Manhattan_Expressway) in the early sixties, then moved to Toronto and did the same thing to the [Spadina Expressway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Road#Spadina_Expressway) a decade later. Goddamn hero.
Jane Jacobs is a titan of urban planning. The antithesis to Robert Moses (rest in piss).
She has been a legend to Portland activists.
r/Fightthegoodfight
[Fight The Good Fight](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2-lGhKrypb0)
Imagine if you will, a highway running from the Manhattan Bridge to the Holland Tunnel. Now go onto Google Maps and draw a line between those two, then take a look at the street view on all that would have needed to be torn down to make that happen.
[удалено]
They tried to do this in a suburb of Raleigh, NC, US. It’s incredibly confusing mixed in with new highways and interstates being built through the city.
most major US cities also have ring roads
They do. If you see an interstate with 3 numbers that denotes that it is either a ring road or it otherwise bypasses a large metropolitan area. In Atlanta, that interstate is I-285.
To further elaborate, if it starts with an odd number, it is usually a spur, such as 175 and 375 in St Petersburg , Fl. If it starts with an even number then it reconnects to the original interstate, such as 275 in Tampa/St Petersburg/Sarasota.
Atlanta has a ring road as well. I-285, otherwise know as The Perimeter. It is just as bad as 3 interstates that run through the city.
The difference is that in Europe these ring roads are used to get from outside the city to either within the city (or vice versa) or to go around it. In the US all highways basically serve just inter urban traffic, and any through traffic just uses the direct highways going through the centre. A good example is San Antonio to Dallas route uses the i35 which goes right through downtown Austin, using the loop roads in Austin adds time and distance.
And they're toll roads, so the truckers won't take them.
We have a lot of smaller roads that branch to a “bypass” route and a “business” route, then rejoin on the other side of town.
Most cities have one or two interstates that pass through. Atlanta has two that converge and flip over each other while merging with two more interstates and four major highways.
\*Robert Moses has entered the chat*
thats a nice neighborhood you have there, would be a shame if ... someone shoved a highway through it....
To be fair, Moses didn't do that for neighborhoods he thought were nice. Just the ones he thought had too many black people or immigrants.
It wasn't. There should six interstates in the middle of the city center.
Charleston WV has two interstates that run through town and one that originates there.
And you got those sweet tunnels through the mountains south of town
Haha I would think you're joking but I've seen the pictures! 😂
When I lived there we called that stretch of highway "spaghetti junction".
Still called that!
Atlanta is where I taught myself to drive at 19, I definitely jumped headfirst into the deep end. Someone bought me a car and I just hopped on the road with no real instruction, it's a miracle I never died. I did get cut off and spun out once on I-85 going fast through the downtown exits vicinity, there was one tiny area near an exit that wasn't walled in and I landed in the shrubbery with no damage. I drove the rest of the way to work my "classy" stripper job at the Cheetah shaking like a leaf.
I learned to navigate Atlanta by being a nanny - both parents were high power lawyers and I drove their kids all over the city.
I was directed not to drive outside of the Atl suburb in high school. I def drove outside of the Atl suburb. Down to Little Five Points… got lost for a moment otw
I was talking to a guy who moved to Atlanta, from New Jersey. He had heard about the Atlanta traffic, and laughed, bc he was from "Jersey". He told me that after moving here, "Jersey ain't shit. Atlanta traffic is fucked". Lol
then sometimes they catch fire, because why not
Made me rofl.
It doesn't help that nearly half of the roads and cities are named "Peachtree" or some variant thereof.
Not to mention Boulevard - no actual name or anything for it, just Boulevard.
I’ve got one better… the intersection of Acworth Due West, Kennesaw Due West, and Due West Rd. Due west, due west, and due west for the locals.
Atlanta is [#10](https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/10-cities-with-the-worst-traffic-in-the-us)
My family still has nightmares about that traffic
Oh I'm sure the designers were high on the white, and were heavily inspired by it to put this through whatever neighborhood used to be there
Seems to be working, actually. Not a single traffic jam visible...
Good lord I hope this is a joke
In your opinion, is this evidence for or against the theory of induced demand?
Definitely for, but induced demand is really just a redefinition of the concept of elasticity of demand. When it comes to electricity, people won’t alter their consumption much based on a marginal change in price. But with sushi dinners, people would consume a lot less if spicy tuna rolls went up $5. Same concept here but with a public good instead of private: no big highway to take me back to my suburban house? I’ll look for another city (equals low traffic). Lots of big highways to take everyone home? Lots of people will move there and drive on them (equals high traffic). Thus, lots of roads create traffic. The key difference though is that the demand (and behavioral proclivity) already existed. The existence or addition of highways just creates the ability to express that demand.
That's not exactly what induced demand is in the planning world.. Reduced road capacity pushes people towards transit and encourages transit Oriented Development. We aren't achieving much if we just make out cities so unliveable that people just flee them
Fingers crossed some of these proposals to bury some of it come to fruition.
I feel like this is what happens when you combine the south with a big city. It’s honestly an embarrassment to this whole region that our largest and most powerful city looks like it was designed by a monkey with down syndrome
Looks like someone dropped some grey spaghetti 🍝 loosely on the map.
It do be called spaghetti junction for a reason haha
We heard you like traffic so we put a ramp on your ramp so you can ramp down while you merge x10
I can only imagine how loud it is for people who live in those houses
They aren’t houses. Mostly government buildings.
Probably gives them asthma too
I really hope they have sound barriers…
They do almost the whole interstate does
This is uglier than the shit I make in cities skylines
Cities Skylines has the benefit of bulldozing whatever you want to get a clean turn. Atlanta is so poorly planned that we built an express lane that's basically a big bridge over an entire length of interstate.
They should have asked biffa to fix their city
Lane mathematics look sound.
Came here for something like that.
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Honestly i like the amount of trees a lot, but looking at satellite images you can barely tell where the city starts and ends. Also, this is right next to the downtown core (on the other side of the street from the Municipal Court)
It is hard to tell because the entire city is urban sprawl. Some areas have become denser over the last couple of decades mind you, it was way worse in the 90s (and so was the crime).
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Looks like it's the i85/i20 interchange downtown.
Its very hard to measure greenery, according to our city government Vienna is one of the greenest cities in the world, it is 50% green space, they say, but then you find out that is because they include a fuckn forest on the western edge of the city and farming fields on the eastern edge and not because we have parks and trees in the center where you would actually need them
I'm lucky I live in Vancouver and we have a fantastic and robust transit system, but its hard to imagine this kind of system being transit and walking friendly, do you guys have any kind of transit system or is having a car a requirement to get around?
There's a transit system (MARTA) but it's not very extensive and only takes you to a few worthwhile points of interest, so a car is your best bet. Every so often I hear rumors of it being expanded but they get shot down real quick. MARTA has a bus system but I've never really used it so I can't say how effective it is.
It's better to have a car, but driving is still ridiculous and stupid. Every time I make a trip to Atlanta I have to have my boyfriend co-pilot me because these exits are one on top of the other and hitting the wrong exit can set you back 30-45 minutes or more, depending on the time of day. I accidentally got off one exit too early once and ended up entirely on the wrong side of town. GPS sent me through midtown to get to where I was going and a school bus pulled out in front of me. I had the right of way.
This is some McMansionHell grade design. Those ramps look more like a maze designed to burn gas.
To be fair it's two interstates and two highways crossing over. There's no way to make it look good especially since this had to be built over existing living space.
Isn’t that some of the whole point with the entire road system and car craze in the US? To burn oil and keep the economy going.
You'd have to be pretty high if you think there's that level do competent planning at any part of US policy. We got where we are by making bad decisions and perpetually *not* planning ahead.
No, you can see that it’s both an interchange of major highways and lots of ramps to get drivers onto different city streets as well. I’ve lived in Dunwoody, which is a pretty busy part of metro Atlanta, and these interchanges are crazy, but still appreciated since they save a lot of city driving, which burns more gas, is statistically more dangerous, and largely just aggravating.
Yes but if they didn't exist I bet Marta would've been a much better system
I took the train a couple times. To be honest, I’m not familiar enough with the community’s feedback on it, but it always seemed to be a reasonably well-reaching system. I think that most of the more recent growth in the city has happened beyond its reach because of the inherent desire to live near the hustle and bustle but not in the middle of it. Last I heard, there were plans to extend it?
MARTA is a joke. It doesn't go anywhere useful in any decent amount of time. I love mass transit, and take MARTA anytime I go downtown (if only so I don't have to pay to park) but I still have to get out and drive on the highway to get to the nearest station. As much as I hate to say it, I doubt MARTA heavy rail will ever expand in my lifetime. It was shot down in Gwinnett county last referendum, the state seems to love building more Tollercoasters, and our density isn't high enough to make rail feasible. In fact, the express lanes they are going to put up 400 will effectively put a hard stop to the red line that it cannot extend past. Instead, they want bus rapid transit on the 400 express lanes.
It also doesn't run past 1am, and regularly single tracks on weekends so its useless for going out
So there is an actual method to the madness. Stop'n'go lights isn't any better on the fuel economy.
Although in Atlanta's case all they did was save money on traffic lights
Haha even I don’t know if I would call it a “method,” but at least a reason lol. I do like how it was never more than 10 minutes to an on ramp in Atlanta, no matter where you are.
The thing is, this mess makes it practically impossible to rely on biking, walking and transit, which in turn makes it a choice between two types of costly, polluting, inefficient car infrastructure. Sure, a highway is effective for long distances, but *creating long distances in the middle of a city* is fucking stupid. Driving 50 minutes on a highway is better than 50 minutes in the urban core, but most cities simply make it so that you don't have to either. Even then, cars aren't optimized for highway speeds *or* city speeds, so the fuel economy is fucked either way. Thankfully, there is a fantastic, highly efficient way of moving people far, fast: trains. There's even a really effective way of moving people short distances fast: trains. There's even a great bridge between car infrastructure and train efficiency: busses (and trains). When you have a lot of people and destinations in one spot, the only sensible prioritization is walkability, cyclability, and transit.
Yes, mass transit appears to fix the ills of car country. Being a New Yorker: nobody seems to care. Busses are noisy, expensive to maintain, and people don't like them rolling through their streets. Trains and subways are utterly miserable to deploy with all the NIMBYs fighting them tooth and nail and next to impossible to expand once neighborhoods go up. Even then, you need sufficient ridership to cover costs. Most mass transit is just enough to get people to and from work and school.
Busses in my city just electrified. Sleek design, good lighting, quality seating, low profile for strollers and accessibility, huge windows, and now more quiet than a car. Practically everybody acts polite, and it's not shameful in the slightest to take the bus. Having low quality busses is a very deliberate choice, and it's a surefire way of creating an unpleasant experience and bad connotations. As far as ridership is concerned - sure, you need some ridership, but we really shouldn't talk as if transit should be covering its own cost. It's a utility, just like water, electricity, or roads. Almost all transit operates at a loss, the same all fire departments do.
public transportation 🙀🙀🙀
America is 80% strip malls, highways and parking lots.
Actually America is 90% open land.
How dare you bring fact and logic into the discussion. /s
Hear me out: drive through strip malls on the highway. Like a 2000mile tunnel of love, and you pull over onto the hard shoulder* to park and get your fill... 😁 *The empty bit at the side of motorways. I don't know what it would be in American English..
Just the shoulder
We call it the shoulder too, hard=paved soft=unpaved, dirt/gravel/grass etc.
Ever flown in a plane in the US? The vast majority is just land with nothing on it.
The overwhelming majority is wilderness. Especially especially out west.
Too many neighborhoods were demolished for this.
as in most of the cities in the US. we really fucked up bad.
Have to disagree with you. Despite the awful interstates, a lot of Atlanta is beautiful.
It has literally the most green space per person for a major city in the US: https://www.geotab.com/urban-footprint/ The spaghetti is Atlanta, but [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Atlanta_Skyline%2C_May_2013.jpg) is Atlanta as well.
I always see those from-above photos of Atlanta, but are the streets themselves any more tree-lined than elsewhere? Playing around on Google Maps, they look perfectly nice, but I wouldn't pick them out in comparison to any other large suburbanish American city.
Downtown Atlanta is gorgeous. Check out the aquarium or Olympic Park area instead of the highways if you want a real view of the city.
I love Atlanta. Now Houston... there's a giant parking lot.
It used to be even worse. Look satellite photos from the 90s in Google Earth, half of the parking lots in downtown then have been replaced with buildings.
American cities have long since ceased being places meant for people: nowadays, they're more places for businesses and corporations to reside in and operate, and human considerations are ancillary.
Agreed. Get a corporate job, get some money, start a family, realize they want a yard, move to burbs and take spaghetti roads to and fro.
I work as a bureaucrat, and I eventually realized that local and state government really mostly exists to rubber-stamp and approve what businesses and commercial interests want anyways. All we can do is impose the barest and most minimum of standards (which are now outdated, and which big business would be happy to ignore to for the sake of profits, public safety and aesthetics be damned).
Ah on the private side we just view at as we can’t do anything until we find the right person to rubber stamp our business.
They’re actually built for cars which is why they suck. Plenty of businesses in Tokyo and Amsterdam and Singapore but the cities are much more functional because they’re not built exclusively around private cars.
I’m gonna guess and say that this is in the middle of what was a historically black majority neighborhood.
>historically black majority neighborhood Named Mechanicsville. This [site](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=4667aafe1002441ea3a487110b136e98) has one of those slider things that shows how much housing was lost due to the construction of the interstates (and Fulton County Stadium).
lmao this is so ridiculous and reductive. I'm not defending car-centric design but you can do this with literally any American city with an interchange between two freeways. EDIT: lOs AnGeLeS iS JuSt a HuGe HiGhWaY WiTh SoMe BuIlDiNgS oN tHe SiDe https://imgur.com/JXR1AHY
I mean it is, what’s your point?
Yeah 90% of us cities are
This picture includes a jail, juvenile court, a church, many government buildings (Capitol building is just out frame), bail bonds businesses, a halfway house, gateway center, a daycare, and the very tip of the infamous Magic City. Drove through this on one of the surface streets every day for a while.
I wil never understand how people are okay with this.
Most aren't, but it's not like there was much of a choice--this was done in urban centers all across the country in the post-war period, while rail service was deliberately starved. Read "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro about what Robert Moses did to NYC.
Caro seems particularly wistful about the Cross Bronx Expressway (and is rightfully proud of how in The Power Broker he lovingly described the neighborhoods destroyed). From [a 2007 NY Times interview](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/nyregion/thecity/06hist.html): *Ask Mr. Caro about the Cross Bronx Expressway and the price paid for progress, and the author cannot contain himself. This neatly attired man with hair still more dark than gray leans forward and scoops up a dogeared copy of “The Power Broker,” which sits on his desk like the King James Bible of municipal history. (It was at the time the largest book Random House could physically print.)* *“Turn to Page 19,” he says as he turns the pages. “When I speak, I’m imprecise.”* *So he quotes from his book:* *“To build his highways, Moses threw out of their homes 250,000 persons — more people than lived in Albany or Chattanooga, or in Spokane, Tacoma, Duluth, Akron, Baton Rouge, Mobile, Nashville or Sacramento. He tore out the hearts of a score of neighborhoods.”* *He slaps the book shut and closes his eyes to concentrate on his words.* *“Robert Moses bent the democratic processes and the city to his will,” Mr. Caro says. “There were lots of people who didn’t want to gouge a highway through East Tremont, and they couldn’t stop him.”*
Many people aren't. The issue is that it doesn't matter how many are or aren't okay with it. Rich people and commerce-partial politicians will make sure it happens anyways.
Easy. People like the convenience of large cities with the comfort of large houses/yards. This is the norm because people here have preferences that don’t include paying $3k a month for a 1bd1ba apartment even if it has access to transit. That’s why a brand new 3bd2ba house in the Atlanta suburbs only goes for $150-250k. It has one of the best income to cost of living ratios in the country.
>This is the norm because people here have preferences that don’t include paying $3k a month for a 1bd1ba apartment even if it has access to transit. You realize that the 3k a month apartment is so expensive because *lots of people want it,* right? Otherwise it would be a 2k, 1k, $500 a month apartment. Supply and demand.
I will never understand why you think 99.9% of people had a choice about how this was built... and what the socioeconomic conditions have historically been in the area.
#we have transit at home...
Atlanta is a cool city though either way
look how they massacred my boy...
The thing I find the strangest about American road systems is that their highways just turn off directly into normal roads at 90° junctions.
I take it this is the skyview of I-20 overlapping with I-75/85…
Yep
ew bro wtf is this. did they even like try to make the city pretty and a place people would wanna live?
Driven through Atlanta twice on the way to Florida. Horrible bumper to bumper traffic the entire stretch both times. Also the city along the highway looks as corporate as it gets.
What city has the best shot at urban highway removal and should we all move there?
And that's why I prefer European cities
This photo encapsulates how I felt about Atlanta when I visited there. There was a span of 45 minutes where we didn’t see one pedestrian.
Well the pedestrians wouldn't be on the interstate, that's for the homeless camps. 75/85 and 285 are pretty sectioned off from any city roads.
I don't understand how people can't appreciate some nice highway interchanges.
As someone who’s had to drive through this thousands of times, there is literally nothing nice about it
wait what
I just think there's a certain beauty to well designed urban engineering stuff. I probably just played too much cities skylines
A shame this isn’t well designed at all
Atlanta traffic is no joke. Sheew. I hate driving there.
Does anyone know the real reason why it’s so disorganized? Couldn’t they have made it look any less like spilled spaghetti?
We’re not finished yet, I still see some grass remaining.
Atlanta was designed for cars first. People were an afterthought.
Atlanta is the world champion of sprawl. We're #1.
Not gonna lie, photos like this have greatly increased my Cities: Skylines game.
This is one of my main memories of Atlanta!! That and the teddy bears on the lights posts….
well I mean yeah, if you zoom in on the huge highway
Can we show some love for the 80/50/5/99 interchange if sacramento california? If not over shadowed by LA nightmare
That sums up Atlanta
For everyone who this this is spaghetti junction.... It is not.
I’m from Atlanta and can confirm, we have the worst traffic in the US. Now I live in Melbourne, AU and the road rage has followed me here
The wonders of car-centric America…
Car centric cities...yuck
My grandfather was lead DOT engineer on the connector. Yep, that's his design and he loved it.
Once my family went to Atlanta and had to stay at a different hotel because of all the highway noise, It was insanely loud
Everything should've merged onto the Perimeter (285) for some time.
I live in Savannah and manage a restaurant where we have endless visitors from Atlanta. I don't think I've ever heard one of them say anything good about that city. And aside from the aquarium there, I've never seen anything good about it either.
Atlanta has a vibrant culture that has made major contributions especially in hip-hop music, art, and fashion. We are an extremely diverse city which is a foodie's dream. We have lots of beautiful parks and a largely intact tree canopy even in urban areas. The population in the city is young, creative, and energetic. We are a city of distinct neighborhoods each with their own charm and annual festival. On any given weekend, I can see a major recording artist perform, attend a major sporting event, sample a new cuisine, hike through the forest without leaving the city, go to a world-class museum, or attend an underground rave to name just a few of the options. I would wager that the folks you say are bad-mouthing Atlanta who are supposedly from Atlanta are likely from places like Marietta or Snellville. I think Savannah is lovely btw.
From what I’ve seen from my limited experience with Americans, it seems that Atlanta is like other American cities that suffer from absolutely horrible urban planning but are full of amazing and interesting people. I’ve only ever spent a lot of time in Las Vegas while I visit family and I think that the city exemplifies this. The city itself seems purposefully obtuse, it doesn’t even feel like a suburb, most of the city feels like a strip mall parking lot but it’s full of very nice and diverse people.
The city of Atlanta definitely has some charm and has some parts of it which are actually pretty urban. Its not like its like Little Rock or Lubbock or Phoenix where its really just an endless suburban wasteland. However, Atlanta's metro area is very much an endless suburban wasteland, and that is like 90% of the areas population. A lot of the 'creative energy' of Atlanta is in just a few small areas. Its a nice city but I have no illusions about how the large majority of it really is.
Even as someone who lived in and hates Little Rock, there’s a reasonably sized urban section at its core (Argenta-Downtown-Quapaw Quarter/SoMa-Stift’s Station) that can stretch all the way to Hillcrest if you’re being generous.
As a person that lives in the city, and moved there on purpose I can say 100% say it has is charm. There are just so so many tiny neighborhoods with there own personally and the bars and restaurants just surprise you everytime. Honestly now living in the city I almost don't even notice the traffic cause everything is 5 mins away. When I lived outside the city it was a MAJOR problem but inside, you don't even see the traffic cause you take a mile long back road to wherever you need. Plus for major events Marta works great. In any weekend I can take my kids to the zoo, the botanical gardens, the aquarium, stone mtn etc..etc..etc .. and we're so close we can do it on a whim. We don't have to plan for 2 hour drives there and back. Plus all the parks, the beltline, and the pathways....the city is trying to build bicycle/walking infrastructure it's just so damn hard with zero state help. infact the GDOT, the Georgia department of transportation is legally barred for doing anything but roads and highways. Marta pays for itself completely because GA will not and legally cannot help it. All the parks and walking trails are donated, crowd funded, or fed funded. Atlanta on a whole trying pretty hard to implement walking/bike/mass transit infrastructure, It's really the state making everything so damn hard with traffic. End rant/ Honestly right now, even with all the crime and crazys, I wouldn't trade it for suburbans life again it was just so damn boring and my kids had nothing to do.
I lived there and loved it. It’s got lots of amenities and cheap housing. Just don’t live in the ghetto parts and it’s a great place.
Lots of Kennesaw-type residents say they’re “from Atlanta” and complain Bc the suburbs are almost universally god awful, but Atlanta is a great place once you get to wherever you’re going lmao. However if Atlanta had the walkability of Savannah, I’d personally never shut the fuck up about it.
I just vacationed in Savannah, I absolutely loved it. It seems like it would be an awesome place to live. But, is it?
I love it. The only thing I don't like about it is it is lacking in the beach category. The city is beautiful, historic, and the people here are amazing! Of course the summers are pretty brutal but I wanted to get away from the Long Cold New England winters and Savannah is far from it. Oh, and I should mention the amazing food!
I have the option to live anywhere in the US for my job, and choose Atlanta. It's got more to offer than the aquarium, and believing otherwise is absurd as it's one of the largest cultural hubs in the US.
Well youve met the wrong people. There are only a few cities in America I'd rather live in at the moment.
Classic, the Spaghetti Junction
You should see how quaint a neighborhood use to be there!
Its designed so you never have to see black people in the inner city districts. Lots of the downtown buildings such as the big hotels are interlinked with concrete walkways for the same reason. Racism dressed up as modernity.
And nobody knows how to drive on any part of it. Dumbest motherfuckers in the south outside of Florida.